


Peter and Tony's One Last, Final, Epic Adventure

by JBS_Forever



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Some angst, and like two lines of humor, infinity war fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JBS_Forever/pseuds/JBS_Forever
Summary: Because Peter is in the wrong place the first time the world ends, Dr. Strange sends him back three days time.And Peter gets one last chance to make it count.





	Peter and Tony's One Last, Final, Epic Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> Reupload! This was written before Endgame. It doesn't line up exactly with Infinity War, but we can pretend :) :)
> 
> This was based off a prompt an anon sent me on tumblr. the prompt said, "A concept: the phone call scene in the Spider-Man PS4 game where Peter is on the phone talking to Mary Jane about the time the both of them and Harry went on a ten hour adventure to Staten Island to find the best pizza in the city (that ended up being the worst), only it's Peter and Tony instead." I haven't played the game long enough to hear that conversation, so I'm not sure how accurate my portrayal will be, but it was fun to write anyway!
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

And because Peter is in the wrong place the first time the world ends, because the universe is so cruel as to have him standing in front of the Starry Night, his classmates dissolving around him, Dr. Strange sends him back three days to the point where the timeline went wrong.

He tells Peter all he needs to know.

He tells Peter this: “When you see it, I need you to get off the bus.”

“How will I know when I see it?” Peter asks.

“You'll know,” Strange says. “Trust me, you'll know.”

* * *

Peter spends the first day with May. He spends the second with Ned.

The third, Strange tells him, should be spent with the person who needs it the most. He says this because he's already seen what Peter will do, has already seen the way the future will lay out. That's why he sent Peter back in the first place.

“Make it count,” he says, because he knows what will happen.

So Peter goes to sleep that night with the world still intact and the image of painted stars burned into his eyelids.

* * *

“Let me get this straight,” Tony says the next day as they stand in the lobby of headquarters, people bustling by on either side of them. “You called in a code and made Happy drive you all the way out here because you want to _hang out_?”

Peter has to fold his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. He shoves them in his pockets. “Um. Yeah. That … sounds about right. Yeah.”

Tony gives him a hard look. “Are you having a stroke? Because this place is filled with doctors. I'm sure we can find someone to help.”

Peter's face burns hot. “No. I just – we never do anything fun.” It sounds dumb even to his own ears, but the dozen of excuses hanging on the tip of his tongue sound worse. Strange didn't tell him _how_ to do this, and Peter isn't close enough to Tony for it to make any sense. Communication may be easier between them now than it used to be, but they both are busy, and they've haven't spoken in weeks.

And Peter can't tell him what he knows.

“Uh.” He swallows against the lump in his throat and shuffles his feet. “I know this is weird, but it, uh – I dunno. The Spider-Man thing has been a lot lately and I just … I need a break, I guess.”

Something flickers over Tony's face. His expression softens into its usual air of disinterest. He says, in a tone a little more kind, “I get that. But you couldn't have waited until the weekend? Kind of busy running a business here.”

“Yeah, but you _own_ it,” Peter says. “That means you can take breaks whenever you want. You're the boss.”

“Pepper is the boss,” Tony corrects, but he steers Peter through the halls and has Friday cancel his meetings for him anyway. Peter knows he's entertaining his request with the notion he's having some kind of delusional meltdown or teenage crisis. He doesn't really care.

“Okay,” Tony says. “You've got my undivided attention. What do you want to do?”

Relief and grief pinch Peter's stomach. “Uh. Want to get some pizza?”

* * *

It takes a while to drive there, and then they're in the upper east side of Manhattan, Tony's sleek, black car parked two blocks away, and Peter is scrolling through his phone, looking for the Facebook invite Ned sent him while they stand in front of an empty building.

“Hate to break it to you, kid, but this isn't a pizza place.” Tony pulls his hood over his head. There's a chill in the air, spring giving way to summer. He peers at the storefront. “I'm not sure this is any place at all.”

“I know,” Peter says.

“And yet you're sure you're not having a stroke? I'm telling you, lots of fancy doctors upstate. I only employ the best.”

Peter winces and shakes his head. “It's this underground thing. Ned and I are always trying to find it, but we never make it in time. They send out this invite and you only have like two hours to get there before they disappear again. It's supposed to be the best pizza in all of New York.”

Tony hums.

“Here!” Peter zooms in on the image on his screen. “Oh. Erm. It says it's in Long Island.” He frowns. “I can find somewhere else.”

“You got any cash on you?” Tony asks.

“Huh?”

“I don't carry real money anymore. Or fake money, for that matter.” Tony zips his sweater up and turns on his heels, moving his way back toward the car. “And we're gonna pass a toll bridge.”

“You … you really wanna go there?”

“For the best pizza in the world?” Tony shrugs. “That's a challenge I'm willing to accept.”

Peter pockets his phone. He hurries after him.

* * *

(_Make it count_, Strange had said, gentler, in understanding. _This will be the last time you'll see him for a long time_.)

(Peter knows. He knows.)

* * *

Banter doesn't come to him as easily as he wants it to. It's hard, with the tightness in his chest, with the future on the horizon. He wants to warn Tony of what's to come. Wants to give him a head start so maybe they can find another way to fix it. But he doesn't. He can't.

He stares at Tony's hands wrapped around the steering wheel. Light reflects off the ring on his finger.

“I guess some good things came from me turning down the Avengers invite, huh?”

Tony turns a curious gaze on him. “What, some kind of learning lesson?”

“I meant the proposal,” Peter says.

“Mmm. Yeah, that would have happened with or without you. Just might have been a little less flashy.”

“I saw it online. It was nice.”

“Should have been. I was holding onto that ring for eight years,” Tony says. He twirls it with his thumb, smirking. Peter's eyes sting.

“She loves you a lot,” he says. He scratches at his face to make sure he's not crying. “You can tell.”

Tony goes quiet. His lips purse, and for a moment Peter thinks he's mad, but when he speaks again, it's weariness that comes through. “It's been a long road. Certainly put her through enough.”

“That's how you know she means it.”

“Aren't you like fifteen? You're not supposed to know anything about love.”

“I don't,” Peter says. “And I'm sixteen.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Okay, big shot. Just get ready. The toll is coming.”

* * *

“All right, don't be mad, but ...”

“It's not here, is it?”

Peter holds his phone up in front of him. The address matches the one on his screen, but there's nothing there to see. An empty shop, abandoned, left behind. He's missed it again.

“Um. I mean, not in the _physical_ sense.”

“That's the only one that matters,” Tony says. “Are you sure this place actually exists?”

“Well, no. But someone would have mentioned that, wouldn't they?”

“Kid, we live in a world where a guy made a fake restaurant that no one had ever been to and got it ranked as number one online. Anything is possible.”

“Are you talking about The Shed at Dulwich? Cause I heard that place is the bomb.”

“I will leave you here by yourself.”

Peter spots a hot dog stand across the street and his stomach grumbles. It's nearly lunch and he hasn't eaten since yesterday, too busy worrying and fretting with new information to keep anything down, and he's starting to feel sick in the way he does when he goes too long between meals.

“Can we get a snack?”

“Giving up on the pizza already?”

“No. Just, uh, fast metabolism and no breakfast. Need to fuel up, you know?”

“Yeah, all right.”

In front of the large umbrellas protecting the food, Peter digs his wallet out of his back pocket. “Two please.”

The man working the cart passes two hot dogs rolled up in tinfoil to him and takes his money. He eyes Tony as he sorts through his register.

“Hey, aren't you Tony Stark?”

“No,” Tony says. “But I hear I do a fantastic impersonation of him.” 

The man drops loose change into Peter's hand, and Peter pulls Tony away quickly, throwing a high-pitched “thank you!” over his shoulder. He waits until they're around the corner and out of eyesight before he gives one of the hot dogs to Tony and unwraps his own.

“Sorry about that. I didn't really think about people recognizing you.”

Tony waves away his apology. “I'd be nothing if I didn't know how to handle fame. Though, gotta say, kid, don't blame you for wearing a mask. Secret identities are fun.”

“Fun and terrifying. Best of both worlds.” Peter takes a bite and talks through a mouthful, spraying crumbs down the front of his shirt. “You ever have a secret identity?”

“For a little bit. Not as Iron Man though. It was way more fun than that. And a whole hell of a lot sexier.”

Peter chokes and coughs. Tony knocks him on the back.

“Right. Sixteen,” he says. “Gotta keep it rated G.”

Peter clears his throat. “PG-13 is fine. Parents strongly cautioned. Some material inappropriate for children. Or anyone named Peter.” He dusts off his clothes. He doesn't realize he's finished his hot dog and that Tony has given him the other one until he's halfway through it.

“So where's this magical pizza place at now, Hannah Montana?”

The page on his phone is blank. Peter has stalked the event enough to know it means they're transitioning between locations. He and Ned spent an entire Saturday once running around the city waiting for it to pop up, and in between updates they'd place bets on where it would land next.

“It doesn't say yet,” he says. He tosses his rolled-up foil into a trashcan. “They have people stationed all over New York so it takes a second sometimes.”

“Gotcha,” Tony says in a way that makes Peter think he doesn't actually care where it is at all.

He deflates a little and lifts his shoulders toward his ears. “Mr. Stark, we don't have to – we can go back, if you want.”

Tony ignores him. “You ever think about going out there without a mask?”

“What?”

“About letting the world know who Peter Parker is.” He's walking now, toward a street where people are gathered, music and laughter floating together into a peaceful mesh of sound. Peter hurries to catch up.

“I – no, not really. I like being able to be normal. Well, _act_ normal, I mean. And I'd be too scared anyway. If people knew it was me, they'd come after May. I couldn't handle that.”

The silence that follows his words leaves him uncomfortable. Tony leads him into what looks like a street fair, and he finds a stand of sunglasses and picks his way through them. Peter watches him, lingering a step behind. Strange's words echo back in his memory.

_Make it count_.

“Do you ever wish you'd kept your identity a secret?” Peter asks.

Tony slips on a set of Hello Kitty glasses. “Nope.”

“Really? Never?”

“There's a lot of things I wish I hadn't done, Pete,” he says. “That's not one of them. How do I look?”

Peter plasters on a smile that makes his face feel lopsided and wrong. He hopes Tony doesn't notice. “I think you should buy them. They really suit you.”

He does buy them, with a loan from Peter because the stand doesn't accept cards, and wears them as if he isn't aware of how ridiculous they look, cat ears narrowing out the sides of the lenses, a bright red bow glued onto the frame. The combination of them with his hood on hides his face well, and they weave through without anyone realizing who he is.

Toward the end of the street, where the fair tapers off, there's an old, mechanical arm wrestling machine that Peter has only seen in movies and never in real life, and he points at it and says, “You ever do one of those?”

Tony perches his sunglasses on the edge of nose and snorts. “Back in the '80s, probably. Why? You wanna give it a go?”

“Uh, no.”

“Is that fear I'm detecting, Saitama? No one will blame you if you're scared. Performance issues are common in men.”

“Are you _baiting_ me right now?” Peter asks, arching an eyebrow.

“I'm offended you would accuse me of such treason. And yes, I am.”

“Fine.” Peter rolls his sleeves up. He sits across from the clay arm and grabs hold of the cold fingers, locking grips. He hits the button to start it, and it takes a few seconds of creaking and squealing noises for it to jolt into action.

Peter holds back the same way he does in fights. It took months of learning where to draw the line on his abilities. It's why now, even to this day, he tries not to punch bad guys when they fight. One wrong throw, one miscalculation, and Peter could kill someone with a single hit.

But Tony is standing nearby, and he coughs out something that sounds too similar to the word “weak” in an attempt to edge him on. There's no real person in front of him, so Peter unleashes a little, and he slams the fake arm down with more force than he intends. It breaks off, and the entire table between him and it shatters down the middle and falls in pieces to the ground.

He glances back to see people moving closer, confused and curious. “We should probably run,” he says.

“Yup.”

They're gone before anyone can figure out what happened.

* * *

He's still chucking when the alert on his phone goes off. The page is back up with a new location, and it drains his giggles into moans. “Oh man,” he says.

Tony tosses the mechanical arm into the backseat. “Where?”

“Staten Island?”

“You want to go to Staten Island for pizza? I swear, kid, this better be the best pizza anyone has ever had in the history of everything.”

They ditch Tony's car in a municipal parking lot so they can take the ferry. In the terminal, Tony keeps his sunglasses on, but Peter can still feel his burning look. They're both thinking the same thing. They're both thinking of Peter splitting the ferry in half.

Peter hopes against hope that Tony won't bring it up. And he doesn't. Not until they're on the upper deck and they've just started moving.

Tony says, “You're not secretly here for some weapons deal, right?” and Peter flushes all over.

“No,” he chokes out. “Nope. No weapons. No – um, did I ever mention how sorry I am about that? Because I am. Sorry, that is. I'm sorry. Really sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. We got the tough love moment out of the way, remember?” Tony tips his chin up toward the ceiling in a thoughtful gesture. “Tensile strength of those webs though. Pretty insane.”

“Um, thanks. Yeah. Thanks.”

“Uh huh.” The tension rises, palpable, nauseating. Peter opens his mouth and fumbles to make anything coherent come out. When nothing does, he sinks back and waits for the ferry to dock.

“This pizza better be here,” Tony says once they've stepped onto dry land.

Peter brings up the coordinates on his phone. “I have a good feeling this time. Come on, it's this way.”

* * *

(Make it count, Peter. Make it count.)

* * *

“Wow,” Tony says. “When you're right, you're right. Best pizza ever.”

They stand outside on the ferry back to Manhattan, leaning against the rails. The sun is beginning to set. The weather is dropping in degrees. Peter watches the Statue of Liberty as they cruise by.

“Mr. Stark,” he says. “You don't have to lie. It was terrible pizza.”

“Christ, I've never put something so foul in my mouth before. And that's saying something.” He laughs, though, and Peter laughs too, this manic, hysteric sound from deep in his belly.

Tony props his forearms on the railing. “Why the hell is that place so sought after? It was like someone set cheese on a piece of bread.”

Peter wipes a hand over his mouth and hiccups. “It's the-the exclusivity.” He laughs again. Tony snickers.

“It's a piece of shit is what it is. But you better believe I'm making everyone I know go there.”

It takes Peter another minute to sober. He breathes out, smiling. “It was fun though, even if it sucked.”

“It was fun,” Tony agrees. “I haven't really been out in the city in a long time. Nice to know things haven't changed that much. People are still getting ripped off as usual. One pizza slice at a time.”

“All is right.” Peter shivers. He rubs his arms.

“So you wanna tell me what's up now?” Tony asks. It's so casual and soft that Peter almost misses it in the sound of water rushing beneath them.

“What?”

“Don't play dumb, kid. It's not a good look.”

A wave of dread makes its way through his body. There's nothing he wants more than to tell Tony the truth, but Strange warned him that time travel is a finicky thing, and Peter is always holding back, in fights, in sports, costume and no costume, and he has to do the same now.

“I just needed a break. I guess I wanted to be Peter Parker today without the mask. There's always so many things going on and people who need saving and I just – I wanted to do something that felt normal one last time before going back in.” He's surprised how easily his lie morphs into the truth.

“You say that like you can never stop,” Tony says. “You're young. It's okay to not get out there every day. The world isn't gonna fall apart without you. You've got time, Pete.”

The ground blurs. Peter presses his hands against his cheeks and closes his eyes.

He doesn't have time. Not anymore. Not after today.

Because Peter knows what happens.

Because the universe is so cruel to have put him in the wrong place at the wrong time – the only one left, Strange told him, who wasn't where they needed to be to get to the future he saw. The future where they win.

Because for Tony to live, for the right people to live, Peter has to die.

“Yeah,” he says, voice wavering. “There's still time.”

* * *

“Want me to drop you off?”

Peter holds his fingers up to the car's heaters and lets the warmth filter through. “Could we maybe go back to headquarters? There's one more thing I wanna do.”

“All right.”

It's dark when they get back upstate. Tony gives him a sweatshirt to wear, because Peter is trembling all over, and then Peter asks him how to get on the roof. It stuns Tony into suspicion, and he looks about ready to call a doctor on Peter when Peter comprehends what he's just said.

“No, no, not for – god, not _that_. I just wanted to – oh my god. There's no light pollution here and I always wanted to see what the stars look like. That's all. I promise.”

“Jesus,” Tony says, swiping his palm across his face. “Should have known you'd want to do something so innocent. We did just spend the day tracking down a pizza joint.”

“Yeah, I – sorry.”

Tony takes him up through each floor, and then to a small elevator located behind a locked door. It drops them out near a ladder, and they climb the rest of the way up to a hatch and crawl out onto the roof.

Tony doesn't seem impressed by the sky, but Peter can't take his eyes off it.

“Whoa,” he says. He lays down on his back and folds his hands under his head. “So cool.”

Tony crinkles his nose. “It's all right.”

“You don't like stars?”

“Stars are different when you think they're the last thing you're ever gonna see.”

“Oh.” Even if he wanted to, Peter doesn't know if there's anything he could say. He'd watched that battle on the news when he was a kid, saw Tony and the missile and the aliens. But they've never talked about it. It's never felt right. It still doesn't.

Tony drops down beside him and mimics his pose. There was a time when he didn't see a future, when he thought he wasn't going to make it, but now he has more tomorrows, and Peter thinks about the ones he won't be part of.

“Do you want a family?” he asks, because he needs something to hold onto. He needs to know Tony will make it count.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I do.”

“I think you'd be a great dad, Mr. Stark.”

Tony glances at him and looks back up at the sky. He doesn't talk for a long moment, but Peter doesn't mind. They're both searching the stars for different answers. Peter hopes one day Tony will find what he needs. He hopes Tony will be happy.

For now, he just lets himself be there while he can.

* * *

Eventually, Tony drives him back to Queens and drops him off outside his apartment.

"Just take it easy, all right?" he says. "Schedule some downtime. Take breaks. I promise the world will be okay without you for a bit."

"Yeah, okay. Thanks, Mr. Stark. For everything."

Peter doesn't cry. He won't cry until Titan, when he's turning to dust, when it settles in just how real it is that he's going to die, because yeah, Strange told him it would happen, but there's always been a part of Peter that thought he'd live forever.

Instead, he lays awake all night, and in the morning there's a deposit of two hundred dollars in his bank account from Tony. He'll never spend it. He transfers it to May and then he's on his way to the museum with the rest of his class and the hairs on his arms are standing straight and he sees the spaceship outside the window.

And this is it. He does what Strange told him to do.

He gets off the bus.

* * *

(Make it count, Peter.)

(Make it count.)

* * *

And Peter knows now the world will be okay without him.

Tony will have a family. He'll have more tomorrows. 

He'll make it count.

He's still got time.


End file.
